Crystal Birthday celebration

Great Northwest Music Tour

Black Lillies

Plus an interview with the band, beer samples and free apps!

Every month the Great Northwest Music Tour blazes a fresh musical trail, bringing an ever-changing lineup of talent to McMenamins Historic Properties. There is no admission charge to the festivities, and our unique hotels offer food, handcrafted beverages and a cozy place to bed down after the last note is played. Bring your friends and family and jam to a different artist every month.

About Black Lillies

Black Lillies front man Cruz Contreras knows a thing or two about the road.

After co-founding Robinella and the CCstringband with his wife, he spent
nearly a decade traveling the road and making music from coast to coast. When
his marriage - and the band - dissolved in 2007, he returned to the road ... this
time, as the driver of a truck for a stone company. It was here, over a
year spent rolling down the highways of East Tennessee, that the songs and
sounds that would form the nexus of The Black Lillies were conceived.

And "Runaway Freeway Blues," the band's third studio album, was realized
exactly there ... on the road. When the Lillies weren't playing their
200-odd gigs during 2012, they were in Wild Chorus Studio in their hometown of
Knoxville, Tenn., working with Scott Minor of Sparklehorse to craft a beautiful
ode to restless spirits and rambling hearts. Rooted in the mud-rutted
switchbacks of Appalachia, "Runaway Freeway Blues" is the sound of a band
that's becoming something of a phenomenon across the country.

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Contreras and his bandmates - harmony vocalist Trisha Gene Brady,
multi-instrumentalist Tom Pryor, bass player Robert Richards and drummer Jamie
Cook - have grown from a few friends sitting around campfires and living rooms
to a band that shows up in far-flung cities where folks to whom they've never
played before already know the words to the songs. Eschewing record labels,
they still managed to put a track from the last record ("Same Mistakes," off of
"100 Miles of Wreckage") in Country Music Television's top 12 requested videos
for four months. (Its predecessor, "Two Hearts Down," was a top-requested video
on CMT for three months.) They've been featured on numerous television specials
and conquered festivals as widespread as Bonnaroo, Pickathon, and CMA Fan
Fair. Despite trafficking in a richer, more authentic brand of country
and Americana than what gets played on mainstream country radio, they've still
been invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry more than a dozen times - a
record for an independent act.

The Black Lillies, in other words, have come a long way from those early
days, when Contreras channeled heartache and regret into a stunning debut.
"Whiskey Angel" was the sound of a man drowning his sorrows, and an
introduction to someone who had languished behind the scenes for too long. As
the guy who loaned out his initials to Robinella and the CCstringband, which
flirted with national fame a few years ago with a hit ("Man Over") on Country
Music Television, an appearance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in 2003, and
albums on both Sony and Dualtone, he was known best as a mandolin virtuoso and
bandleader.

Starting over, he stunned friends and peers in the East Tennessee music
scene with a voice that makes you think of Randy Travis or Dan Tyminski or even
the great Ralph Stanley in his prime: steeped in regret, seasoned with pain and
tempered in the fires of hard times. It served "Whiskey Angel" well, and
when "100 Miles of Wreckage" was released in 2011, the band seemingly burst
onto the national stage - spending five solid months in the Americana Music
Association's radio charts (four of them in the top 15).

That record was the sound of a man taking stock of his life and his past,
regarding the pain and the turmoil with a measure of wistful acceptance. Which
brings us to "Runaway Freeway Blues," which finds the band focused on the
horizon, filled with the nervous energy of excitement at the unknown future
waiting on the other side of that distant hill, enthusiastic about the journey
as much as they are about the destination.

The emotional arc of the new record is brilliant, so vivid and detailed with
lush harmonies and instrumental virtuosity that's as powerful in the quieter
moments as it is explosive during jubilant ones. You can cherry-pick any number
of songs from "Runaway Freeway Blues" and find gold. Banjo, pedal steel, piano
and everything else lift this record up on wings of uncommon grace and stunning
vitality, and when Contreras and Brady combine their voices, it calls to mind
classic duets from times long gone: George and Tammy. Gram and Emmylou. Johnny
and June. From gentle Laurel Canyon folk rock to the honky-tonk heartache of
classic country to winding jams, "Runaway Freeway Blues" is an album that
defies easy categorization.

It was conceived on the road, inspired by the road and completed there as
well: Contreras mixed the album while on tour, by phone and email, coordinating
overdubs and guest instrumental appearances (Josh Oliver, formerly of the
everybodyfields; banjo player Matt Menefee, who's toured with Mumford &
Sons, Levi Lowery and Big & Rich; and a host of Tennessee's finest
musicians on horns, harmonica and percussion) while playing into the wee hours
of the morning, driving all night and setting up in the next city to do it all
over again.

It's breakneck, brazen and beautiful. It's the sound of a band that's rooted
in East Tennessee but more at home piled into a van stacked with gear, windows
down and aimed toward the next gig. It's an album that lets long-time fans as well
as relative newcomers to the Black Lillies phenomenon know that this train
isn't stopping anytime soon. -- By Steve Wildsmith